We’ve been seeing a lot of videos exposing just how easily Photoshop can manipulate an image into something very different from its original version. It’s my hope that the prevalence of these videos might lead to some reform, because the effect heavily Photoshopped ads are having on our perception of beauty is frightening. But this video? This one is…shall we say, not like all the others. For one thing, it runs in reverse, showing you the finished product before revealing what the red bikini-clad model looked like before she got all digitally enhanced; and for another, it’s…well, maybe you should just watch it for yourself. It’s eye-opening:
You know Photoshop has gone too far when you can use it to turn a piece of pizza into a glamorous model.
Okay, yes, it’s funny — it is College Humor, after all — but in all seriousness, it’s also true. Why are we basing our standards of beauty on a piece of software that can turn a pizza into a human? When you look at it through this particular lens, it’s completely and utterly absurd. More absurd, even, than that wacky “sexist” children’s book we took a look at yesterday. Ah, the power of satire!
And then there’s this: If Photoshop keeps going in this direction, how long do you think it will be before pizzas totally replace humans as models in advertisements? From there, it’s only so long before the pizzas of the world become sentient and rise up, Matrix-style, and then where will we be? Living in a sci-fi dystopia where pizzas have the run of things. And unless Keanu Reeves is around to save us all, that’s not at all a place we want to be.
Image: College Humor
